The City of Toronto has created a working group under Councillor Ana Bailao to review the plans for the massive sell-off of affordable housing. The Wellesley Institute has urged the working group to reject the sell-off plan and has set out a series of policy options to preserve and maintain the existing supply of affordable housing and add new units to meet the growing need. There are plans emerging from a coalition of housing providers for a community land trust to take on the ownership and management of the TCHC stand-alone portfolio. Non-profits are used in other municipalities – including New York City and Chicago – to manage scattered site housing.

In June of 2012, the total number of individuals on the wait list was 158,032. There were 1,777 new applications from households for affordable housing and only 271 households were housed from the list. The total number of households was up 25% from June of 2011.

About Michael Shapcott

Michael Shapcott is Director, Affordable Housing and Social Innovation at Wellesley Institute. Michael has worked extensively in Toronto, in many parts of Canada, nationally and internationally on social innovation, the non-profit sector, civic engagement, housing and housing rights, poverty, social exclusion, urban health and health equity. He is recognized as one of Canada’s leading community-based housing and homelessness experts. He is currently on secondment to the Princes' Charities Canada.

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Acknowledgement of Traditional Land

We would like to acknowledge this sacred land on which the Wellesley Institute operates. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years. This land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory.

Revised by the Elders Circle (Council of Aboriginal Initiatives) on November 6, 2014

In the spirit of equity and inclusion, if we can improve on this statement, please contact us. Thank you.